Literary notes about ostentation (AI summary)
Literary writers often deploy the term "ostentation" to evoke the idea of excessive show or artificial grandeur that may belie more questionable motives. In historical narratives, for instance, ostentation is linked to lavish displays of power and wealth, hinting at both moral decay and the vanity of rulers ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]). At the same time, moral and social commentators use the word to critique pretentious behavior, warning that such showiness can detract from genuine virtue and simplicity ([7], [8], [9], [10]). Even in more satirical or ironic contexts, the term suggests an emphasis on outward form rather than substance, underlining the tension between authentic living and the mere performance of status ([11], [12], [13], [14]). This multifaceted usage underscores how ostentation serves as a potent literary device to question and illuminate human behavior.
- Alexandria, an active and ambitious prelate, who displayed the fruits of rapine in monuments of ostentation.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Sapor, who had been so long accustomed to the tardy ostentation of Constantius, was surprised by the intrepid diligence of his successor.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - In his last moments he displayed, perhaps with some ostentation, the love of virtue and of fame, which had been the ruling passions of his life.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - The latter boldly asserts, that he knew very many Romans who possessed, not for use, but ostentation, ten and even twenty thousand slaves.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Ostentation was the first principle of the new system instituted by Diocletian.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Cæsar had provoked his fate, as much as by the ostentation of his power, as by his power itself.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - What man, what sage, can live, suffer, and die without weakness or ostentation?
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - He resides in a handsome mansion in Grammercy Park, but lives simply and without ostentation.
— from Lights and Shadows of New York Lifeor, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City by James Dabney McCabe - When the people murmured at this waste, he replied, "Better is a little given with an humble heart than much given with ostentation."
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves - Let us do what is right without ostentation; let us not fall into vanity through our efforts to resist it.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - " So passes, like a gigantic mass, of valour, ostentation, fury, affection and wild revolutionary manhood, this Danton, to his unknown home.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle - His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration.
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - It carries the usual “cow-catcher” in front of the locomotive, but this is mere ostentation.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner - Our honesty, we free spirits—let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity!
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
